Ageing and Embodied Masculinities in Physical Activity Settings: From Flesh to Theory and Back Again

Abstract

Ageing, like masculinity, does not mean the same thing to all men. It varies in how it is understood, experienced and lived out in daily practices. This is particularly so when the body is foregrounded in the places where sports and physical activities take place. Here, making sense of age is a gendered process. To illustrate this, I draw upon selected age-autobiographical moments (Gullette, 2003) to explore my experiences of the gym as a particular place in which I simultaneously do age-specific gender and gendered-age. My intention is to add to the limited literature on men’s experiences as embodied, ageing subjects and to illustrate some of the affective interconnectivities between them. According to Eman (2012) and Shirani (2013), this is an important task because the social processes of gender include ageing, and their interplay generates specific meanings about masculinity and ‘growing old’ or ‘ageing well’ that can represent challenges to identity in later life.